Saturday, April 26, 2014

Out the door again...

Despite having some Israeli wound bandages in my range bag in case of emergencies, I had a woeful lack of training in how to actually, you know, use them. My gunshot wound self-care plan was basically "rub some dirt in it and walk it off."

This morning, I am going to remedy that, because knowing is half the battle! (Not setting yourself on fire in the first place is the other half.).

Good for you, Tam!I took an entry-level combat medicine block as part of a longer weekend course a couple of months ago, and it was life-changing, as in, easy to learn and retain; and now the usual hemostatic/chest seal/compression/CAT-Twithglovesnasalthingy kit rides in my driver's side car door. Everyone should take a quick course on the basics, shooter or no.

If I've learned anything vis-a-vis first aid, it's that there's no such thing as too much gauze.

When the cost of Israeli dressings became too dear, I began the practice of putting up "expedient" field dressings consisting of:o 4x4 gauze pado sanitary napkin (maxi, natch)o ACE wrap

All of these can be had at the Dollar store for less cost per-unit than an Israeli dressing.

The only thing that needs to be sterile is the thing going against the wound (the gauze). And since the wound itself isn't sterile, an argument can be made that the dressing itself need not be.

What's more, if you're putting it up as a blow-out dressing SPECIFICALLY for gunshot wounds, put two each gauze/pads in per ACE wrap in a ziploc baggie and you have a dressing for both entry and exit wounds - something the Israeli dressing, for all its capability, cannot address on its own.

On the subject of sterile, at a fun show a while back a emergency-supplies dealer had two boxes of Israeli bandages, about five dollars difference between them. I asked why, answer was the cheaper ones were past their expiration date. My first question was "How does a bandage expire?"

As Global noted, if you need the damn thing it's not liable to be in sterile circumstances, and stopping the bleeding is the important thing. So I got a couple. They're in one bag sealed inside another bag, so I'm not too worried about contaminatation.

Israeli dressings are great stuff; though as noted above you can do "field expedient" anything that doesn't violate the First Rule is better than standing around or panicking. Our Command Surgeon was a big fan of the IBD but did NOT like the "Quik-Clot" versionss at all.